The COPINE scale was originally developed for therapeutic psychological purposes. More specifically, it is used to distinguish between child erotica and child pornography. […]

In the late 1990s, the COPINE project ("Combating Paedophile Information Networks in Europe") at the University of Cork, in cooperation with the Paedophile Unit of the London Metropolitan Police, developed a typology to categorize child abuse images for use in both research and law enforcement.[4] The ten-level typology was based on analysis of images available on websites and internet newsgroups. Other researchers have adopted similar ten-level scales. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COPINE_scale

Is the child victimized by the photographer? or is the photographer victimized by the child porn law?

SAP scale

In 2002, the sentencing advisory panel (SAP) of England and Wales devised the SAP scale, condensing the different levels of child porn from 10 to 5 It dropped the Copine levels 1 to 3 completely. The SAP levels indicate increased seriousness of the crime, and are also considered indications of the dangerousness of the offender (which is problematic). See Sexual deviance: theory, assessment, and treatment.

Dost Test

In order to better determine whether a visual depiction of a minor constitutes a "lascivious exhibition of the genitals or pubic area" under 18 U.S.C. § 2256(2)(A), the court developed six criteria. […]

1) Whether the focal point of the visual depiction is on the child’s genitalia or pubic area.

Harmless photos might become child pornography, when cropped in a way that they emphasize clothed genital areas. Cropping a photo (with emphasis on the genital areas) turns it from a legal mainstream newspaper child swimsuit photo into a heinous child porn photo. It is hard to understand how the child in the photo can be victimized by cropping the photo.

Concerning the lascivious display of clothed genitalia, the Department of Justice described use of the Dost test in child pornography and 2257 documentation regulations in a 2008 rule, writing that the precedent United States v. Knox, 32 F.3d 733 (3d Cir. 1994) did not prohibit ordinary swim team or underwear model photographs, but "although the genitals were clothed in that case, they were covered by thin, opaque clothing with an obvious purpose to draw attention to them, were displayed by models who spread or extended their legs to make the pubic and genital region entirely visible to the viewer, and were displayed by models who danced or gyrated in a way indicative of adult sexual relations." […]

The test was criticized by NYU Law professor Amy Adler as forcing members of the public to look at pictures of children as a pedophile would in order to determine whether they are considered inappropriate. "As everything becomes child pornography in the eyes of the law—clothed children, coy children, children in settings where children are found—perhaps children themselves become pornographicen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dost_test

Everything becomes child pornography.

You will see in the Copine scale analysis below, that any department store adolescent lingerie catalog can become child pornography, when collected by a man that might get excited by the photos.

Human-Stupidity Analysis

The Copine scale (and the derived Sap scale) is a good attempt to rate child pornography on one dimension, by its "seriousness".

It totally fails to consider 2 other important dimensions

age: penetrative sex with a toddler or with a 17 year old have the same rating (Copine 9 out of 10). The first causes serious injuries and is surely unnatural. The second is perfectly legal in Europe where the age of consent is 16, a natural legal act between adolescent lovers, still it is one of the most serious levels of child porn. An adolescent couple can legally have sex, but they cannot photograph themselves doing it. Otherwise they get victimized by themselves (?). Human-Stupidity believes they get victimized by the insane laws.

consent vs. non-consent: consensual S/M spanking play of adolescent minors or kidnapping torture are the same (Copine 10, the highest rating)

The Copine scale

The COPINE Scale

Level

Description

Where is the abuse?

1

Indicative

Non-erotic and non-sexualized pictures showing children in their underwear, swimming costumes from either commercial sources or family albums. Pictures of children playing in normal settings, in which the context or organisation of pictures by the collector indicates inappropriateness.

2

Nudist

Pictures of naked or semi-naked children in appropriate nudist settings, and from legitimate sources.

3

Erotica

Surreptitiously taken photographs of children in play areas or other safe environments showing either underwear or varying degrees of nakedness.

Totally harmless and inoffensive Level 1 photos become level 4 just by context.

A collection of department store child lingerie photos becomes child porn just because it is suspected that the collector is turned on by it. The crime is in the mind of the collector, not perpetrated against the children.

5

Erotic Posing

Deliberately posed pictures of fully, partially clothed or naked children in sexualised or provocative poses.

The verdict: No abuse when adolescents pose in sexual ways

Adolescents are known to naturally and legally engage in sexual innuendo, flirting, and more

Children often copy poses they see in magazines or on TV. If fully clothed children photograph each other, they are in serious danger of producing child porn and to become victims not of their actions but of the child porn hysteria.

Criminalizing possession of such photos becomes totally absurd if the " children" are 17 year olds posing provocatively when fully clothed.

Worst case scenario

The worst case would be 3 year olds prodded to artificially pose in provocative poses they would not have posed in by themselves.

6

Explicit Erotic Posing

Pictures emphasising genital areas, where the child is either naked, partially clothed or fully clothed.

Again, the crime is in the mind of the viewer.

This could be photos of 16 year old adolescents in a world wide transmitted Olympic gymnastics event. If the perpetrator uses high resolution photos and digitally zooms into genital area, a mainstream press photo of a world championship sports event suddenly becomes child pornography.

The adolescents, of course, are probably totally unaware that the viewer digitally zoomed into genital area of totally harmless normal photos.

Merely focusing one’s eye onto the genital area of the photo should constitute an equivalent crime.

7

Explicit Sexual Activity

Pictures that depict touching, mutual and self-masturbation, oral sex and intercourse by a child, not involving an adult.

Human-Stupidity reported about an adult man facing a mandatory 2 year minimum sentence for possession of a masturbation movie with a 12 year old: when he was 12 he recorded himself masturbating. The only trauma and abuse we can notice here is caused by the ridiculous legal persecution which can lead prison rape or suicide.

Children playing doctor, caught by a surveillance camera also would constitute Copine level 7 pornography.

It also raises the disturbing question, why possession of one set of masturbation photos of a 15 year old, who masturbates daily all year long is a heinous crime, but a video of the same 15 year old being clubbed to death by a high school gang is legal Fox TV newscast.

4 year old toddlers incited or forced to do sexual games would also fall into this category. Whether the models are 4 year old, or 16 makes no difference in the Copine scale. If the model engaged in the behavior out of his or her own volition, or if they were incited or forced to do acts unnatural for their age also makes no difference.

8

Assault

Pictures of children being subject to a sexual assault, involving digital touching, involving an adult.

"Assault" is most likely consensual touching, or sex of a 22 year old adult with a 16 year old adolescent "child"; I

t could even be totally legal sex in countries where the age of consent is 16.

It also could be totally legal sex of a married couple, where age of consent is immaterial due to marriage. So if one partner is 12 or 14, but legally married to an adult, the sex act is legal and normal everyday behavior. But owning a movie of it is a crime.

Copine level 8 could be real penetrative rape of a real 4 year old child.

So Copine level 8 can be

depiction of a normally occurring legal activity, or

depiction of a heinous crime causing bodily injury to the immature genitals of an infant.

b. Pictures where an animal is involved in some form of sexual behaviour with a child.

This could be

a 16 year old engaging in consensual role play involving spanking or playful handcuffing or bondage fantasies. Or

it could involve a kidnapped 3 year old being tortured and injured by penetrative sex with her immature small genital tract.

All critique of the Copine scale apply to the Sap scale below.

Sap scale

In 2002, the sentencing advisory panel (SAP) of England and Wales devised the SAP scale, condensing the different levels of child porn from 10 to 5 It dropped the Copine levels 1 to 3 completely. The SAP levels indicate increased seriousness of the crime, and are also considered indications of the dangerousness of the offender (which is problematic). See Sexual deviance: theory, assessment, and treatment.

The SAP scale is more value-neutral. It is just a reduced version of the Copine scale.

Further questions

Additionally, the entire child porn discussion completely fails to address why mere possession of depictions of anything remotely sexual related to adolescents or children is a heinous crime, but for profit web sites with depictions of violence, gore, mayhem and killing of children are perfectly legal.

15 Comments

Clarence says:

But you know why this all makes no difference and things won’t change soon?

It’s partly because of hysteria because of the real abuse that does take place.

It’s partly due , I think , to an idea I’ve seen floating around the “manosphere” that older women do not want to compete with 15 to 17 year old teens.

But it’s mostly because those involved in writing and enforcing these laws get too much power, social prestige, and money from the war on child porn. It’s a useful tool, and those in power know they could probably bust most adult men and quite a few adult women for child porn if they look hard enough and apply these definitions strictly and indiscriminately.

I’m certainly not against child protection laws and reasonable -reasonable!- age of consent laws.

Thanks for this site. I bet you never feel so alone as when writing about this subject even though I’m sure the thought of hurting or having sex with a pre-adolescent makes you retch just like it does me. It’s too bad they conflate everything.

[…] to deceive the public is an integral part of the child porn witch hunt. Read my article about the Copine scale. Rinehart was convicted of producing child pornography. But in cases where a suspect is charged […]

[…] Dr. Diamond himself was scared and thus advocated only artificially computer created child porn. He would not dare to say the obvious, that child porn older then 30 years could also be grandfathered, plus all child pornography that depicts legal acts with clearly no victims.0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Compare the Copine scale […]

[…] complicated by manipulative language that intentionally conflates children and adolescents and erotica and explicit pornography. We will elaborate further below.30% of 17 Year-Olds with Cell Phones Report Receiving Sexually […]

[…] Of course, prohibition of child porn fuels the demand for real children, as Dr. Milton Diamond‘s papers prove. Those who can act out their urges masturbating with pictures of children have less urge to abuse real children. Additionally, much of child porn is neither porn nor has (prepubescent) children, rather is adolescent erotica (Knox vs. USA, Copine scale). […]

[…] child porn, when collected in ways that indicate that the interest is not in the clothing (See Copine scale, also Knox vs. USA). The children do not get victimized by millions of viewers of their newspaper […]

Anon says:

Like or Dislike: 10

Love it. I’m mid thirties male and single. Opposite sex are not interested in me, never have been, never will be.

It’s nice every so often to spice things up a bit knocking one off over the 16 year-olds in the shopping catalogues. I’m not interested in actually meeting one, nor talking to one online or downloading stuff relating to one engaged in any sexual activity or abuse. But hey if collecting the pages puts me on the wrong side of society’s rules all the better. One better than knocking off over someone’s Facebooked wife, gran or cat.

So do it, put me in prison. My existence there would be better my rubbish current one. Hey I’ll cost more to keep me in a cage than I pay in tax at the moment.

Put me on a register; great, I can legitimately defend myself against a vigilante daddy and husband, trying to make sure his perfect Facebook family is safe. He’ll be the one lying in the gutter.

I didn’t ask to be an evolutionary obsolete, redundant male; a species that society doesn’t really want except for organ donation.